Movie Review: Frozen (2013)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I saw the movie “Frozen” the same day I saw the musical “Wicked” on Broadway, which is about the most girly day a 51-year-old straight man in New York on business can have.

Both stories pass the Bechdel Test by a mile. Each is about two girls—one a princess, the other more tomboyish—who have powers others want to control. There are boys in the story, sure, but the most important relationship is with the other girl. Because each, in the end, sets the other free. Each, in the end, helps the other defy gravity.

What’s truly interesting, though, is how each story updates fairy tales for the 21st century.

Updating fairy tales
“Wicked” may have the more interesting take, since it upends the pretty-girl-is-good/ ugly-girl-is-bad dynamic. Its hero is Elphaba (Lindsay Mendez), green-faced, and the future Wicked Witch of the West, who is ostracized from birth and belittled at school, but who, with the help of Galinda, or Glinda (a hilarious Alli Mauzey), comes to realize her power and takes on the corrupt patriarchy as represented by the Wizard of Oz. As “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” did with “Hamlet,” so “Wicked” does with “Oz.” We go behind the scenes, as it were, and discover that the story we know isn’t the real story. The Wicked Witch is really good, and in cahoots with Glinda, and the Scarecrow is her lover. Most importantly, instead of the ugly becoming pretty via a kiss or love or happenstance, as in many fairy tales, the pretty, or the handsome, becomes deformed. The lesson isn’t “We are now beautiful and thus whole”; it’s “We are in love and thus whole.” It’s the triumph of the marginalized.

In Disney’s “Frozen,” we’re back to pretty, and princess and queens, not to mention Idina Menzel, who originated and won a Tony for playing Elphaba on Broadway, and who here plays Elsa, the older, more powerful sister. Elsa’s “Let It Go” song is basically “Defying Gravity” updated. Same idea. Here I am, fuckers, with all my power. I won’t be held back anymore.

The problem I had with the movie—besides being a 51-year-old man instead of a 10-year-old girl—is that for much of the movie Elsa holds herself back. Not sure what her gameplan is, to be honest. Does she have one?

Elsa has the power to freeze things with a touch of a finger or a wave of her arms, and as a teenager she nearly, accidentally, freezes her younger sister, Anna (Kristen Bell), to death. So she’s been counseled to keep herself under wraps, and does. Even after their parents die on the high seas, she hides from her sister in her room, and hides her sister and herself in their castle on the hill. But in becoming queen she must descend to be with the people. In doing so, she accidentally unleashes her power and creates a perpetual winter.

Hers isn’t the main story, though. Most girls presumably identify with Anna, the younger girl struggling to keep up with, and connect to, her older sister, and who follows the path of Scarlett, Rose, Bella, Katniss, yadda yadda, by getting to choose between two boys: Kristoff, an everyday iceman, and Hans, a prince. The movie does a good job of making this a tough choice for most of the movie ... until, of course, Hans reveals his evil machinations to take over both kingdoms. That makes it easier.

Here’s the twist. During the course of pursuing Elsa, Anna’s heart is partially frozen, which means she’ll die unless “an act of true love” saves her. And wouldn’t you know it, at the end, as she’s near death, here comes Kristoff racing across the ice. Except! Nearby, Hans has Elsa at a disadvantage and is about to kill her. So Anna intervenes. She sacrifices herself to save her sister. In doing so, she saves herself. That is the act of true love. It’s not passive reception; it’s active sacrifice.

I sat there and thought, “Not bad.”

Footnote
Three of us watched the movie that night, all of us over 50, but interestingly the women weren’t impressed. At all. They expected greater, Pixarish things from the movie: wit, etc. True, there’s not much of that, and the songs aren’t very memorable, but I was impressed by the animation and the “act of true love” twist. So did our fourth when it was explained to him the next morning. The men liked the twist, the women didn’t. For what it’s worth.

Now I’m waiting on the “Wicked” movie. It’s too good not to put on the screen.